


your scent on me (for many days)

by MistressKat



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: First Kiss, Fluff, M/M, Mutual Pining, Sharing Clothes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-24
Updated: 2020-07-24
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:40:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25489393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MistressKat/pseuds/MistressKat
Summary: “You’re wearing my shirt,” Bruce says and then immediately wants to smack himself in the face.Tony’s mouth quirks up. “Oh, it’syourshirt now?” he asks and some of the hesitancy melts away. “Makes sense, since you’ve clearly been wearing it.”
Relationships: Bruce Banner/Tony Stark
Comments: 12
Kudos: 123
Collections: Scribblers' 100 Fandoms Challenge





	your scent on me (for many days)

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt and title source: [Sinun tuoksusi (Your scent) by Eeva Kilpi](http://www.luminarium.org/suomenrunous/tuoksusi.htm)

Bruce doesn’t give the shirt back. At first, he simply forgets. Well, before that, he’s busy crashing and then saving the world and then crashing again, and the fact that he’s wearing Tony’s shirt for most of that isn’t exactly a priority. 

When Bruce wakes up from his second ‘post-hail-Mary-heroics’ sleep he yawns, stretches and then nearly gags when he smells himself. The shirt gets unceremoniously stripped off, dropped in the laundry basket and left there while he stumbles his way to the shower. 

And that’s when he forgets about it. Life resumes its normal pace of science and food and team and Tony and banter and science and popcorn and Tony and avenging and Tony and Tony’s hands on the wrench and the little lines of concentration on his face and the blueberry smoothie waiting for Bruce and Tony’s pleased little smile when he drinks it and Tony and Tony and _Tony_.

And then, Tony’s shirt, freshly laundered among the other clean clothes neatly piled at the end of Bruce’s bed. He asked for this, rather than just have the housekeeping staff put things away because it’s still too weird to even have housekeeping staff or enough clothes that dressing up requires choice and… Putting his own laundry away is the one thing that seems familiar. 

He picks up the shirt, shakes it open and then – inexplicably, or so he tells himself – brings it to his face and inhales. It smells of expensive laundry detergent of course, but because Hulk’s senses are far better than Bruce’s and because he seems to want to smell it too, they get a trace of Tony’s expensive aftershave too. And motor oil and sweat and smoky bourbon that makes their tongue tingle. Hulk huffs, a sort of half sneeze dogs make when smelling something strong, and retreats and there’s Bruce, standing by his king-sized bed he doesn’t know how to sleep in and smelling Tony’s shirt like a creep.

He should take it back. It had been… a loan. Something Tony had given him – right off his own back, without a second thought – when Bruce had climbed his way out of a Hulk-sized hole of rubble and dead robots. A temporary measure. But… It’s late now. And even though Tony will probably still be awake, probably still even be working, interrupting that for a shirt seems… silly. So Bruce folds it back and puts it in the drawer instead, on top of his own clothes. 

Then he forgets about it again. Sort of… on purpose, though. Every time the thought passes through his mind – ‘Should give Tony his shirt back’ – he’s in the middle of something, Tony’s in the middle of something, they’re in the middle of something, maybe in the middle of _each other_ , in that space where words and ideas and the workings of the universe flow between them like a river; wild and wide and full of stars. And Bruce thinks ‘Now’s not the time’ and ‘I’ll get to it tomorrow’ and ‘It’s not like Tony Stark is missing one shirt’. 

And it would be fine. Except the shirt doesn’t stay in the drawer either. 

The thing is, it’s an exceptionally comfortable shirt; soft and the same grey-blue colour as the Atlantic, with long sleeves and a vee-neck. It’s also a bit too large on Bruce who, when not green, isn’t exactly the biggest guy around. And Tony with his unrelenting fitness regime is definitely wider around the shoulders. 

Bruce likes it; the fact that the shirt hangs loosely on him, the sleeves grazing his knuckles unless he turns them up, which he doesn’t. It’s a comfortable shirt to put on in the evening when he’s on his own, making tea, reading before bed. It’s comfortable in the mornings too, for sitting in the sun, letting his body fall into meditation. 

It’s very, very comfortable to sleep in; hands tucked into the sleeves, Tony’s scent – now largely imagined but no weaker for it somehow – seeping into his dreams. 

Bruce doesn’t return the shirt. 

Tony doesn’t ask for it back. Maybe he’s forgotten too. 

He remembers a few weeks later though. 

They are freshly back from a mission, tired but mostly fine. This week’s narcissistic villain had trialled his chemical weapon in Rio de Janeiro. Thankfully, his math skills weren’t as well-honed as his self-grandeur and instead of carnage, the test had only resulted in an outbreak of a truly irritating rash. It wasn’t fun, but it wasn’t death either, and after speaking with the local doctors at length and doing some tests himself, Bruce was content that there weren’t going to be any nasty aftereffects either. Hulk hadn’t really been needed this time as Tony and Steve had done most of the evacuation and ground control, while Natasha and Clint had captured the culprit. 

It’s strange, coming back and not feeling like he needs to immediately fall face first into bed, but he isn’t exactly up to any more work tonight either. 

Tony apparently feels the same. “You wanna grab dinner?” he asks, leaning against the elevator wall, hands in his jeans’ pockets, a faded Lynyrd Skynyrd t-shirt bunched up awkwardly against his middle. Bruce thinks about putting his palm right there, against the messy folds of cotton and the curve of Tony’s stomach, of fisting the fabric in his hand and pulling…

He blinks. Maybe he’s more tired than he thought. 

“Yeah,” he says, because to say no would be weird. And he needs to eat. “I’ll meet you on the main floor in twenty?”

The elevator stops on Bruce’s floor and he steps out. “Steve’s probably ordered a stack of pizza. You should go rescue yours.” 

He expects Tony to just nod or make a quip about Steve’s appetite rivalling Bruce’s before disappearing behind the elevator doors. What he does not expect is for Tony to just follow him out. 

“Okay if I just wait?” he asks, and there’s something open and vulnerable about his body language, the way his shoulders curl, how he seems to sway, just a bit, like the day is catching up with him as well. 

“Sure.” Bruce swallows the ‘It’s your building’ because he knows Tony doesn’t think like that, not about this, and hates it when others do.

He nods toward the couch instead and leaves Tony idly browsing his bookshelves while he goes to take a shower and change.

The hot water feels amazing, but Bruce resists the temptation to linger, conscious of Tony waiting. He is hungry too, though it’s not the kind of hollow pain that follows transformation, and there is no desperation about it, his mind having finally caught up and starting to trust that the next meal will materialise every time. Bruce dries himself off briskly and throws on yoga pants, his hand automatically reaching for Tony’s shirt. 

He realises two things at the same time. One, the familiar soft shirt probably isn’t the best clothing choice right now given the company. And two, the point is moot anyway, because the shirt is not where he usually leaves it, draped at the foot of the bed. 

Bruce frowns and has a quick look around the bed but can’t find it. There’s no time for a thorough rummage though and in the end, he picks one of his own shirts from the drawer, pulls it on and goes back to the main living area. 

He finds Tony on the sofa, feet propped on the coffee table, one of Bruce’s books – on Persian poetry – in his hands. Bruce also finds the missing shirt. On Tony.

“Oh,” he says, something hot flooding his insides, flush rising from his chest. It’s mostly embarrassment, but not entirely, and he doesn’t know what to do with either of those things, what to do with the way Tony looks up at him, smiling but... kind of hesitant. 

“You ready?” he asks, putting the book on the table and getting up. For a few seconds he doesn’t seem to know what to do with his hands and then shoves them back into his pockets. Absurdly, Bruce notices that the sleeves that are just that bit too long on him, are the perfect length for Tony. 

“I…” There’s a moment, where Bruce could just say ‘yes’, and they could just go have pizza with the others and no one would have to acknowledge anything unusual and Tony would have his shirt back and Bruce… “You’re wearing my shirt,” he says and then immediately wants to smack himself in the face. 

Tony’s mouth quirks up. “Oh, it’s _your_ shirt now?” he asks and some of the hesitancy melts away. “Makes sense, since you’ve clearly been wearing it.” And then he… Then Tony… He picks up the front of the shirt and brings it up to his nose, and inhales. “Smells like you,” he says. “I like it.” And it could be a joke, just one of those meaningless flirtations Tony punctuates most of his sentences with. It could be. 

But Tony isn’t smiling, and it isn’t a joke. 

There’s heat in Tony’s eyes, intention in the way his gaze flicks up and down Bruce’s body, returns to his face. It’s not new either. Bruce has seen it, of course he has, he’s not blind and he’s not stupid, but he is a coward and he’s never let himself look before but now… Now he notices Tony’s earlier t-shirt on the sofa, meaning he’s wearing his shirt – Bruce’s shirt that is Tony’s shirt that _is_ Bruce’s now – against bare skin, and he lets himself watch the way Tony smooths the fabric down over his chest, the light of the arc reactor clear through it, how his hand glides down too slow to be anything but deliberate, palm flat and fingers splayed over his stomach, tip of the little finger hooking under the hem just a bit and…

Bruce traps it there, his hand holding Tony’s in place as he steps right into his space, all but pushing him against the back of the couch. “Do you?” he asks, but it’s rhetorical, just something to fill the thickening air between them, because this close Bruce can see the way Tony’s eyes dilate, the way his mouth drops open and his pulse, on full display at the base of his throat, picks up pace. 

This close, Bruce can _smell_ him; fading cedarwood and citrus, something metallic underneath that, all overlaid with sweat and a sharp spike of arousal. When he opens his mouth and breaths it in, he can _taste_ it too. 

“Bruce,” Tony says, and his eyes are almost fully black now, fingers of his free hand twisted in Bruce’s shirt. “ _Please_.”

Inside him, Hulk hum-growls, a deep sound like an avalanche or a seaside cave during a storm, and some of that much seep out because Tony makes a noise at the back of his throat, a trapped whine that Bruce wants to pull out of him and swallow whole. 

“Wanted to smell you,” he admits, pressing his face into the warm curve of Tony’s neck, into the open vee of his collar, drawing in a long, greedy breath. “Wanted to smell _like_ you,” he says, voice still a distant rumble. 

“ _Fu-u-u-ck_.” It come out long and hitching and Tony’s head lolls to the side, giving Bruce more access. He releases Tony’s hand so he can press the two of them together from hip to chest, pushing Tony against the couch properly now, Bruce’s thigh slipping between Tony’s easily. 

“Yes,” Bruce agrees. “I want that too.” He kisses Tony then, on the side of his neck, under his jaw, the edge of Tony’s goatee scratchy and perfect against his lips, on his cheek, unbearably tender and unable to hide it. 

“Unfair,” Tony whispers. His voice is hoarse, body a taut line against Bruce’s. 

He pulls back just enough to see Tony’s face, to run hands over his – _Bruce’s_ – shirt, carefully tracing the outline of the reactor, feeling Tony tremble at that. “What’s unfair?” 

“You had the shirt,” Tony says, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows. “I had nothing, not even a stray sock.” He grins, but it comes out wobbly, trying too hard to make it a joke, and failing. “I didn’t _know_ , I didn’t want to _presume_. I couldn’t…”

Bruce cuts him off, because he can’t bear to hear his own fears from Tony’s mouth. So instead he kisses him, hands fisted in the front of his shirt, drinking each doubt, every last drop of hesitation off Tony’s lips until there is nothing left but the slick slide of their tongues.

Tony makes a noise like drowning, his hips stuttering helplessly and when Bruce finally pulls back, they are both panting. 

“ _Presume_.” The word rolls out like a boulder, and he’s not angry, Hulk is not angry, but they are… frustrated. And happy. “You should. You _can_.” He catches Tony’s eyes, willing him to understand. 

Tony’s breath hitches and his fingers curl into the loose waistband of Bruce’s trousers, knuckles pressing into his lower stomach with intent. “Okay,” he says on a swallow. “I’ll try.” 

“Good.” Bruce kisses him again; a reward for both of them. “ _Good_.” He rests his forehead against Tony’s shoulder, shamelessly rubbing his face against the soft fabric of the shirt, drenched once more in Tony’s scent. 

“Bet it looked good on you,” Tony says. “The shirt, I mean.” His hands are fanned over Bruce’s middle now, rubbing over his stomach, cupping the curve of his ribcage. 

Bruce makes an incoherent noise and bites the meaty junction of Tony’s shoulder in retaliation, right through the fabric. “Looked even better on my bedroom floor,” he murmurs, because you don’t spend months in Tony’s company and not leave an opening like that unfilled. He draws back enough to watch the line land, relishing the way incredulous laughter steals over Tony’s features, taking years off in its wake. 

“That’s terrible!” He grins wide enough to break something, and Bruce wants that mouth on him like he’s wanted very little else in his life. “ _I love it!_ Let’s make it happen immediately.” Tony pushes Bruce back gently, grabs hold of the hem and peels the shirt off himself in one fluid movement.   
  
Then – tossing a smile over his shoulder that can only be described as hopeful – he heads toward Bruce’s bedroom, the shirt dangling from his fingers. 

It takes Bruce three whole seconds to unfreeze his muscles but when he finally moves, he moves _fast_. 

Turns out, that as good as Tony’s shirt looks on his bedroom floor, it’s nothing compared to Tony himself, spread open and voice breaking on Bruce’s name.


End file.
